Black Clover Season 2 Breaks Streaming Records After 5-Year Hiatus

Black Clover Season 2 made an emphatic return. Premiering October 3, 2026, after a five-year hiatus, the comeback episode immediately set multiple new benchmarks for the series, pulling in a 9.4/10 score on IMDb and racking up more than 100,000 likes on Crunchyroll within days of release.

Studio Pierrot picked the story back up exactly where episode 170 left off, continuing Asta and Yuno’s journey without skipping a beat after half a decade away.

How Big the Numbers Actually Are

A 9.4/10 opening episode score is a notable jump for the franchise. It trails only Black Clover’s all-time highest-rated episode, Episode 167, which remains the series’ IMDb peak, but the comeback premiere now sits as the second-best-rated episode in the show’s history based on that metric alone.

MyAnimeList tells a similar story, with the series currently holding an 8.82/10 rating following the premiere. Crunchyroll’s own engagement numbers back up the IMDb surge too, with Episode 1 crossing 100,000 likes on the platform shortly after release, a strong signal for a series returning after such a long gap.

A Season Built for a Weekly Return

Black Clover Season 2 streams on Crunchyroll every Saturday at 8:00 a.m. PT / 11:00 a.m. ET, matching its Japanese broadcast slot of 11:00 p.m. JST on TV Tokyo and other domestic stations. Episode 2 followed on October 10, keeping the weekly cadence intact.

The season is confirmed for 24 episodes, split across two parts, giving Studio Pierrot a substantial runway to build on the momentum from the premiere. Crunchyroll’s availability spans North America, Central and South America, Europe, Africa, Oceania, the Middle East, CIS countries, the Indian Subcontinent, and Southeast Asia, making this one of the broader simulcast rollouts for a returning franchise this year.

Why the Gap Mattered

Black Clover’s anime went on hiatus in 2021 after 170 episodes, leaving the story on pause while the manga continued ahead of it. A second season was formally announced at the Crunchyroll Industry Panel during Anime Expo 2025, giving fans roughly a year of lead time before Season 2 actually arrived.

That wait appears to have paid off in audience enthusiasm rather than eroding it, based on the premiere’s reception so far. Whether the early numbers hold up as the season progresses remains to be seen, but the opening episode has already put Black Clover back in the conversation alongside the genre’s biggest current releases.

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